


Apple Cider

by BeamsFromYourM2



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sburb Session, Alternate Universe - No Sburb/Sgrub Sessions, Drinking, Mentions of sex dysphoria, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-08
Updated: 2020-06-08
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:07:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24611257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeamsFromYourM2/pseuds/BeamsFromYourM2
Summary: Dave is drinking cider and processing his feelings.
Kudos: 4





	Apple Cider

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time posting on Ao3 and my first piece of written media ever. Take this as a warning, I'm not a writer, so my grammar and language use in general might seem a bit odd. I'm open to suggestions and general help, especially with tags.

You take a sip. Then another sip. And another. And another. Another.

Wait, is that it? The bottle is almost empty, but you don't feel drunk at all. Okay, well, maybe you're a little bit dizzy. Maybe you can't stand still. Can't walk perfectly straight. Your speech is somewhat slurred, too. Is it? Or is it not? You try saying something out loud and repeat it few times, but you can't figure out if words sound right. Doesn't matter either way, because it's still not enough. You want more. More. Until you won't be able to feel anything and the whole reality collapses into a warm, tangled dream. 

No more problems, at least for a while. Nothing exists when you are drunk. Nothing to bother about. Not even about your friends. To be fair, sometimes you feel sorry for ignoring them. You used to send them somewhat incoherent messages while drinking. They didn't mind usually, although one of them often tried to give you some sort of armchair psychoanalysis, and boy was it exhausting. It's not bad on itself. You actually find it heartwarming that she's trying to help any way she can, it probably means that she cares. But there is something about these talks that makes you deeply uncomfortable. 

Maybe it's timing. One thing is to analyze your usual walls of text ridden with bizarre metaphors, at least you're sending them when you're sober and can control your choise of words and information you're willing to give better. Another thing is to dig through your drunken blabbering where you may or may not say too much. Makes you feel as if you're getting completely exposed in front of her. You can't be exposed. You shouldn't be exposed. That's why you decided not to bother your friends anymore every time you decide to drink. They seem to have their own lives going on anyway. It's just the way it is, the less you talk to some, the more distant they grow. This is especially true for online friends, it's much easier to lose each other in time this way. Well, so be it. Less opportunities to expose yourself. It is not supposed to happen at all. Not with you. You're cool. Chill. Collected. Indifferent. You may fool some strangers, but your friends already know what's behind your facade. However, you still want to try and keep it. At this point, you're starting to realize the only person you are trying to look cool for is yourself. You actually crave to open up, yet at the same time, you tell yourself that you shouldn't. You should be cool. 

And everything you do should be cool, too. Even drinking. Okay, maybe you're way too old to actually think this way, these days probably not even teenagers would consider calling poisoning yourself to the point of borderline blackout "cool". But it is still cool in your case. Drinking is cool not on itself, but specifically because you are doing it. Everything you do is cool. Including drinking. Drinking. Is. Cool. You're definitely not trying to numb your pain. You're drinking because it's cool to try and act so calm and collected while you're getting drunk, unlike many others. Look at them, starting to spill out beans when they get intoxicated enough. You're not like them. That's what makes drinking in your case awesome. You're chill. 

Until you aren't. But it doesn't matter after you cross this line, so it's fine too. Feeling like the whole world splits apart all while you listen to your favorite music, taking you to places you have never been before, places that don't probably exist... places... music... 

... goddamit. You're already starting to sober up. This sure spoils the mood. Should have got something stronger than cider. You went with cider because it is essentially the same old apple juice you loved so much as a kid upgraded to an adult version. This is the apple juice that grown ups are supposed to drink. At least, that's what you're trying to tell yourself. You could have just bought normal juice instead. It's not an option, though. Not today. Today you're letting yourself fall apart. Or was going to let.

Instead, booze keeps wearing off and you return from your drunken daydream wonderland. The whole day already passed while you were trying to have some good time. Time flies fast these days. You don't really care about it anymore. The older you get, the less it matters. The less anything matters. Although, sometimes you wish you could do something about it. Wouldn't it be great to go back in time, try to change something? Relive some nice memories? Or jump to the future, check out where the life is going to lead you? You used to drift into fantasies about getting some sort of super duper power that will allow you to do that. Sometimes you'd dream about what exactly you would change and what exactly awaits you in the future. You think about meeting your past and future selves, talking to them from a different perspective and trying to learn either something new from them, or ask about something you forgot. You used to roleplay something like that with your friends back when they had more free time. It was fun, but everyone slowly grew out of it with you being the last. Even when there was nobody to play with anymore, you still enjoyed this little world you created for yourself within the roleplay and drifted into a special headspace of yours. You rarely do this nowadays, though. With nobody to take part in it and you aging, it seemed too weird to keep enjoying stuff like this. Cool adults don't do this. Hey, come to think about it, what if that's the reason people start to drink and take drugs? It's unacceptable to have fun like this at any given moment when you're sober, but it's completely fine and expected to act weird when you're drunk or high. Can always blame the drug and this excuse works pretty well so far, since collective conscious is still convinced that people aren't themselves when they experience altered state of mind. 

Whatever, though. It became boring to dwell on these dreams either way, drunk or not. They don't excite you anymore. You often feel like you have no future and no past. Only the present bothers you, not a second before, not a second after. This is one of benefits of drinking too, it petrifies you at your current point of existence. Just this moment. And nothing else. Doesn't matter what happened a moment ago. Doesn't matter what happens next. 

Doesn't... matter... just a void that slowly consumes you...

Nothing matters...

...Ring, ring, ring. Buzz. Ring, ring, ring. Buzz.

The sound of alarm wakes you up completely and you immediately forget what you were thinking about. Probably because halfway through this stream of consciousness you accidentally took a nap. Well, now you're back here. Sober, awoken, the mind is surprisingly clear. You find yourself lying on the couch, hugging thin crumpled fleece blanket. Pillow is lying on the floor, although you don't remember knocking it off. You take the phone to turn the alarm off and begin to briefly scroll through your last messages. You didn't send anything to anyone after the cider started kicking in. That's a good sign. You don't even want anyone to know that you've been drinking again today.

You get up and head to the bathroom. Everything is still a little bit hazy, but at the same pretty lucid and clear. It's like you were born again. Born again into the same reality though, so it doesn't feel that good. It's still the same place you lived at for decades. Nothing changed since you figuratively left this place few hours ago. You see it on your way to bathroom, your PC is still here with same browser tabs you had open when you took the first sip, your bag is in the same place you left it when you got back from store. 

And here you are, in the mirror. You're still Dave. Still wearing tight red t-shirt that highlights the shape of your narrow waist and wide hips. You don't like that. The more you look at the reflection, the more small details you notice. They're everywhere. Hands, arms, legs, face, shoulders. It's only one single thing that bothers you, but it's everywhere. All over your whole essence. Usually you try to ignore it. Sure, you can feel your body all day long, but it's easier to get distracted from it when you're focused on whatever activity you pick to be busy with. Right now though, out of every possible option, the activity you decided to choose is to stare in the mirror and make yourself feel worse by soaking in awareness. To think about it, there are days when you're okay with it. Sometimes you accept things the way they are. Does it make you feel bad? Yes. Will it go away? No. Moving on. It's just a part of your life, you're used to it anyway. There are good days, there are bad days. Today is definitely not the good day and this is one of reasons why you decided to get drunk in first place.

So just stop looking. You need to distract yourself. Go talk to people. Who to talk to, though? You scroll through messenger again. One of your friends is still online, but you're not sure if you want to message her. She probably fell asleep without noticing it anyway, one of her strange habits. At least that's what she usually says when you point that out. Narcolepsy doesn't qualify as a "habit", but hey, what do you know. Back to the scrolling.

Hell, why not...

  
\-- turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT] --

TG: sup  
TG: dont remember ever seeing you online for past few years  
TG: are you still alive or what  
TG: figured i should find this out   
TG: there is probably no use in keeping a contact of someone who kicked the bucket  
TG: and essentially letting your app to be haunted by a ghost   
TG: since thats what dead contacts are  
TG: ghosts  
TG: that make every launch of the app an equivalent of going into a fucking haunted mansion  
TG: why not buy the whole place and move in to enjoy all the joys of being another clueless victim of some wicked danger they pretty much got into in themselves and saw it coming  
TG: good motherfucking riddance   
TG: unless the house has got some chill fella like casper the friendly ghost  
TG: he might scare you shitless at first   
TG: but once you know him you two will become bffs   
TG: and maybe that is going to be a lesson that not all ghosts are insufferable doucheburgers  
TG: im down with that bruh  
TG: but whatcha gonna do if its not casper  
TG: you come to your new cheap ass house you bought from some shady looking crackhead and dont expect a thing  
TG: wow what a fucking bargain you might think to yourself  
TG: and then you hear boards squeaking here and there but you assume your ass just got too fat from eating at kfc every day   
TG: which you have been doing for weeks already because why the fuck not if you can afford a whole damn house you probably can get greasy takeouts every day  
TG: so you ignore it since you dont have scales to figure out whether your fat ass is the main cause of creaking floor or not  
TG: then you slowly become aware that the sound comes out of every corner   
TG: and its not some crusty wood   
TG: and then shit hits the fan the moment you notice thick black hair descending from the ceiling  
TG: uh oh the crackhead forgot to mention that mrs saeki was brutally killed by her nutcase husband in this house  
TG: have fun with your curse now  
TG: the curse you got yourself into  
TG: for a major discount  
TG: go grab your curse while its still cheap yo  
TG: they have wireless editions that you can always take with you to the bathroom so you wont shit your pants while dying from a heart attack   
TG: stuff is rare though and gets sold quicker than another bajillionth newly announced iphone   
TG: do ghosts use iphones  
TG: download your personal haunting ghost for free without registration  
TG: in a form of a dead account in your contact list   
TG: haunting forever  
TT: I told you I set this thing on invisible.   
TG: oh holy fuck  
TT: Holiest of fucks.  
TT: What do you want? 

  
...that was plain stupid and utterly inappropriate. Let's just put away the phone and go to sleep. Yeah, sounds great.

  
TG: long time no see i guess

\-- turntechGodhead [TG] ceased pestering timaeusTestified [TT] --

TT: Coward.

**Author's Note:**

> A bunch of unnecessary details about the setting that I decided not to put into tags since I'm not sure if any of this is relevant:
> 
> 1\. The whole thing is technically supposed to be a prelude to stridercest, however, Bro and Dave are not related. And since I'm not sure whether or not I am going to continue working on this AU, I decided not to pick a shipping related category nor tag it as shipping yet.   
> 2\. Dave is adult, probably older than 25. Age difference between him and Bro is supposed to be small, less than 10 years.  
> 3\. Both are supposed to know each other from childhood or at least adolescence, but I have no idea how they met yet.   
> 4\. The ending is directly inspired by that missed call from grandpa meme https://i.redd.it/ko7zefs7i7qz.jpg


End file.
